☿FTL

History

When humanity nearly reached the end of the 20th century, a strange experiment conducted in Fascist Germany - a experiment that was considered random, until they discovered a field emanating from the experiment - a FTL bubble. Although far too small and unstable to last more than a few microseconds, a small circular craft was lifted a few feet into the air. While this happened, Germany fell apart around the scientists and they, like Von Braun, hid outin a villa and threw themselves at American forces. However, the leader of the project was captured on route to said villa by the Russians, who forced him to travel to Moscow and create a demonstration craft for them. After this he was put into a Gulag when Stalin believed him to be wasting time with small experiments that did little obviously. (Even though he tried hammering out the specifics of FTL field creation.)

American efforts took just as long, but the efforts were put into particle accelerators and found useful. The fields let particles into them for various effects, but were a research dead end by the end of the decade. Despite this, fortunately the Advanced Research Directorate thought funding a small experimental test facility was worth it by a narrow margin. (The Advanced Research Directorate was created to oversee various projects inherited from German efforts, including continued heavy water experiments funded under a different rationale than in germany.)

This was the second fornicate break, as the heavy water experiments paved the way for the form of heavy water that would be required in some measure by any first generation drive. In the year 1993, one year after Clinton took office abouts, the FTL drive was invented accidentally, by pointing the drive away from Earth or where earth would be in several seconds, and just activating the drive. Experiments were not overtly showy until the final successful experiment.

In a year had a heavy lift system based off the FTL drive ready. (Note: The HLV drive rides space time like a bumper car rides the electrified grating above it. It does not create a bubble, but merely moves a ship quickly in the 3rd dimentional direction specified. It is also very slow (slower than the speed of sound.)

President Clinton promised a 'profitable' Mars colony in five years, and after six months got the materials their to set up a manned colony to explore the materials on Mars that were available for use in contruction. Within the year the base was creating materials that could be shipped to Earth (although not that many, and the materials were already made on earth using other processes. The only thing that was cheaper was ironically production of bricks. However, plastics that were made with local materials were happily consumed in much the same way as 'natural' foodstuffs: mostly by hippies who could afford it and desired to spend the marginal preminum on martial plastics.

(Author's note: While I do not understand the FTL drive generation I, II or III, Gen I drives require some fuel storage, pumps for water vapor+heavy particle/heavy water with specific particle system like a vapor/liquid cooling system, and the actual part that interacts with spacetime.)